The person in question has given us the following information:
We lived in Kisapsa; my parents were farmers. After March 1944, when the Germans
invaded the country, Jews had to face misery. First, they ordered Jews to wear yellow stars
as signs of differentiation. There were only 20-25 Jewish families in the village and there
were some people who learnt about this decree only later, and went into the street without a
star and returned home badly beaten. They seized anything that was related to farming. At
Easter they even took our cow. The local notary was very wicked, he did not like Jews, and
staff sergeant Szigeti and gendarme Szilágyi harassed Jews a lot and assaulted them.
Around the 10th of April, on the first day after Easter they collected us, led us into the
school, where they kept us for two days, and then they took us into the ghetto of
Mátészalka. The ghetto was at the cemetery and thousands of Jews of the area were
crammed into it. During the night, gendarmes entered the place and beat us up. During
the day, ethnic German SS men came in with thick clubs and would not leave until
they broke their clubs on our backs. People ran to all parts of the ghetto but if you
could not run away in time, they would beat you half dead. Some were beaten because
the yellow star was not sewed on properly, others because they kept their hands in their
pockets, that is, they found fault with everyone. Men were taken away to work. In one place
they had to dig pits; in another place they had to re-cover them. Their only objective was to
keep them busy and torture them. Later, also women were taken to dig pits, and if they did
not like something about someone, it did not matter whether the person was a woman, a
man or a child, they would invariably beat them till the blood flowed. I was convinced that
the ghetto of Mátészalka was the worst of all. If a woman wrote a letter from the ghetto
to her husband who was in labour service far away, she was trussed up for two hours
and they chased us with clubs to watch it. Gendarmes guarded the ghetto both outside
and inside, and we could not go into the street. We stayed there for three weeks.
At the beginning of May, they deported us to Auschwitz. They entrained us Sunday
afternoon, putting 80 people in each freight car. We had little water and were very thirsty on
the way. Hungarian gendarmes escorted us till Kassa, where they handed us over to the
Germans.
Three days later, Wednesday evening we arrived at Auschwitz. I was sent into the group of
young women to the right side. They took us into the baths, and from there, into Camp C. I
was in charge of the toilet and for this reason I got extra Zulag. I did this work for 5
months. One day, I fell sick with typhus, and lay sick for 7 weeks. At selections, a doctor
from Ungvár helped me. He always hid me. During one of the selections, when I had
already felt a bit better, out of 450 people only 37 were left. Dr Mengele wanted to put me
also among the sick, but the doctor from Ungvár said to him: “Das ist doch eine gesunde
Frau,” so he put me among the healthy. We saw how they took the underwear off the
others, put them up on a truck and carried them in the pouring rain towards the
crematorium. On another occasion, the selected people were led into the block of the
bathroom, where they were left naked till next morning. They were not given dinner, and in
the morning they were carried to the crematorium. A girl from Beregszász lay next to me.
She felt already quite all right, nevertheless, she was taken away. I was very sorry for that
poor girl.
In November, I left Auschwitz for Hochweile with a transport of labourers. Our job was to
carry wood from the forest. We walked 9 kilometres to the place where we worked, and had
to carry very heavy logs. If we put two pieces on our shoulders the SS grumbled and put
another one next to them, so we often thought we would collapse. Supplies were poor. Four
of us shared a loaf of bread; and each of us got 20 grams of margarine every second day and
three quarters of a litre of soup at noon. The SS Lagerführerin was good to us; she hurried
us at work but did not touch us. She said if we wanted to go home we had to work. The
Lagerälteste was nastier; she often made things difficult for us. We stayed there for 3
months.
They took us from Hochweile to Gross Rosen. We had to walk there. The trip lasted 12
days. We received two pieces of turnips for the trip and a plate of warm soup only once.
We remained in Gross Rosen only for 10 days, but we suffered a lot during this time.
Reveille was at dawn. The SS came in and opened the door and the windows and beat
everyone with a belt. They did not even wait till you got up. They came to the beds and
beat us in the bed. It was worst than in Auschwitz. When we set off, there were 1,000 of
us. Ten days later, there were only 570 of us because many people died already on the way.
Ten days later, they took me from Gross Rosen to Mauthausen. We went by train, and the
journey lasted five days. For 2 days we did not eat anything, and got some bread and
margarine only the third day. We spent three days in Mauthausen before they took us to
Bergen-Belsen.
We arrived in Bergen-Belsen in February. They lodged us in a block where there were
1,300 of us, out of whom maybe only 200 women survived. For two days we did not get
food at all, we were dizzy from hunger, and people kept fainting. There was a great typhus
infection that caused the death of 40-50 people every day. I got typhus. The English
liberated us the 15th of April 1945. I was not conscious at the time; I regained consciousness
only a few days later in the hospital of Bergen. Some girls told us that after the liberation
the English had poured some powder on us that killed the lice in half an hour.
I spent six weeks in the hospital of Bergen, from where they took me into Cell, where I
spent another three weeks. When the Czech-Slovakian transport set off, they took us to
Pilsen by trucks, from where we came home by train.
For the moment I will go home to Kisapsa and wait. Some of my relatives may turn up.